The Cat Islands are almost gone. Will we save Grand Isle? | The Times-Picayune
On March 25 Aleah Taboclaon stands on the last remnant of the Cat Island chain that once stretched for miles across the southeastern corner of Barataria Bay. (Bob Marshall)
Last Sunday I motored out to the southeastern edge of Barataria Bay say good-bye to an old friend — the Cat Islands.
This line of grass and mangrove islands once spread for miles across the bay like a string of green pearls. Today all that’s left is a tiny strip of crushed shells and sand maybe 30 yards long and 10 feet wide. That will be washed away with the next storm. And part of my life will go with them.
As they had for generations of sportsmen before me, The Cats became one of my favorite destinations, a place responsible for a library of warm memories of good times with good friends. Their grassy shorelines were favorite year-round haunts for redfish, while the oyster reefs that surrounded them attracted schools of speckled trout during summer spawning season. When the wind was right, the silver and bronze shadows of speckled trout and reds would be waving in clear green water when we arrived, waiting to pounce on our offerings of live shrimp or gold spoons.
Decades ago, when some of the islands were still large enough, twisting bayous offered shelter from sudden squalls, respites where we could share lunch and a cold drink while watching dolphins play and raccoons search for meals along the shoreline. In fact, the raccoons gave the islands their name; when the early Spanish explorers first came across the bandit-faced critters, they thought they were members of the cat family.
Of course, history tells us those early settlers found a much different bay. Fresh water dominated then, vast cypress swamps covered the natural ridges as well as islands like nearby Grand Terre, where the pirate Jean Lafitte made his headquarters, while the Gulf shoreline was guarded by miles-wide oyster reefs.
During my years the islands were open exhibits for observing marine and bird life, signposts for the comeback of the brown pelican and other fish-eating birds, rescued from the brink of extinction by the ban on the insecticide DDT.
But those memories include the painful recognition over the years that the places we loved were dying. The Cats, like the rest of our coast, had been fighting a terminal disease for decades. An archipelago that once featured miles-long islands was falling apart, breaking in a series of ever-shrinking islets that were slowly turning to open water until nothing was left.
The cause was parental neglect.
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